Changes
by xnessuno
Summary: Teenagers are difficult. Could be John/OC, still really not sure. Alternating POV between John and Avalon.
1. Chapter 1

**Weeeellll, this is a fanfic about The Breakfast Club. I still don't know if it's gonna be John/OC or not, but there IS an original character. I'm trying to not make her Mary Sue at all, but if she starts to lean in that direction I want someone to immediately warn me hahah. I just want her to be as human and normal as possible. **

**This is taking place about a month after the Breakfast Club, and everyone is still friends... I wanna make it a perfect world like that ya know ;) It's gonna be alternating POVs, mostly between John and Avalon but every now and then I think I'll have another character's perspective just because they're all interesting characters.**

**Any suggestions, reviews, and constructive criticism are wholly welcome (even if they're bad) aaand I hope you like my story!**

_**(DISCLAIMER: The Breakfast Club belongs to the late great John Hughes, the only thing that belongs to me are my characters.)**_

Avalon fidgets uncomfortably, pulling at the sleeves of her sweater and sighing loudly. The front office of this school is too cramped, too... plastic. The entire room smells like a stale kind of sterile, and the fluorescent lights put a weird glow on everything, from the rude attendance lady to the cheap blue carpet running from wall to wall. The heater is on much too high, or maybe she's just nervous. Nervous and sweaty. Very, very sweaty.

Not a good thing to be on your first day at a new high school.

"Here you go, honey," the nicer of the desk women says, and Avalon darts up, dragging her bag behind her as she steps up to the counter. The woman signs off on her schedule, passing it over to her. "It's alright if you're late for the first week or so that you're here, it's kind of hard to get adjusted, I know. But just a tip - all electives are on the first floor, all math and science is on the second floor, and all English and history is on the third. Alright?"

Avalon nods and smiles, saying a quick, "Thanks," and turning to exit the office.

Immediately, it's cooler in the hallway. She sighs in relief, fanning her face with her hand and slowly shuffling down the hallway. She hasn't even looked at her classes yet; she just wants to get to the nearest bathroom and sit there for awhile until she can work up the guts to just go to her first class.

She finds a bathroom next to the stairs and inside, it's empty. She sets down her bag, looking at herself in the mirror, making sure she doesn't look too bad. The flushing of her cheeks has gone down, her hair isn't messy - or as neat as it can possibly be, with hair as curly as hers - and her makeup is generally... agreeable. All she's asking for today is to go by mostly unnoticed, and even if she is, she'll have decent friends while she's here.

Illinois is supposed to be temporary.

Finally, she looks at her schedule. First period has been in session for at least twenty minutes, meaning there's a little over thirty minutes left. Chemistry, European History, Trig, Woodshop, Ceramics, English 3, and a free period. She presses her lips together. Not so bad.

Avalon picks up her bag and makes her way up to the second floor. The halls are completely empty except for a janitor that she goes by and a girl delivering passes, and she keeps circles around the halls, looking for 220. After ten minutes, she ends up where she started, the side staircase next to room 200. Avalon furrows her brows. Jesus, how did she pass it? The numbers on the doors are huge and white, no way to miss it. And she isn't even that nervous. She huffs in annoyance, deciding to go slower this time.

She works her way towards the middle bigger hall, eyes slowly scanning across the doors. 210, 211... At the end of it, she's assuming if she takes a right or a left, 220 has to be on either side. But she's not taking a risk, so she looks around, hoping to see the same girl delivering passes or the janitor to ask if she's generally going in the right direction. A door, the door to room 214 opens, and a boy in a jean jacket leans against the doorway. "What, Mrs. Stella, you don't trust me? I just need to take a leak, is all. Ya gotta go, ya gotta go."

Avalon's nose crinkles. He's her only option right now. He turns around and she steps up, quickly asking, "If I keep going this way am I gonna find 220?"

The boy stops. He looks her up at down, squinting at her curiously, as if she just asked him the most confusing question he's ever heard in his life. "Is your destination located within the walls of Shermer High School?"

"Obviously."

"Then you don't have a problem finding it, toots." He turns away from her, allegedly on his way to the bathroom, but now she's doubting it.

Avalon sighs. She fucking hates wise guys, boys that can't just stop for a minute and be serious instead of blowing everything off. "It's a simple question, man."

He stops, not turning back to face her but to face the fire alarm and fire extinguisher in the wall. He looks at his reflection in the glass of the fire extinguisher, picks at something in his teeth, and eventually shrugs. "Yeah. Keep goin' that way and it's on your right. But Martin fuckin' blows," he says, referring to the teacher of the class.

He reaches over, pulls the fire alarm, and runs down the hall.

For the second time in two hours, Avalon is back in the office. The desk receptionist looks up at her in confusion, and the exasperated girl holds up a pink slip to see the principal. "Did a hall monitor think you were cutting class?" the woman asks.

"No. Someone pulled the fire alarm and I was just mysteriously too close," Avalon says, sitting down in the same chair she did before. The desk receptionist pokes her head into the principal's office, and immediately he calls her name in a monotone.

Avalon walks in slowly, expecting the worst. She doesn't remember much of him from when she registered, mainly because he was talking to her parents and he had on his best smile, rambling about the school's admirable test scores and how it was a prestigious state school. But as soon as her parents were out of earshot, he went off on a boy in his office, with a tall Mohawk and a studded jacket. Avalon knows the boy probably was doing something out of line, but the way the principal was screaming at him, basically treating him like he was nothing, made her immediately dislike him.

Inside of his office, she starts to fidget again. He points at a chair across from his desk and she settles down, sliding the slip across, issued to her by the only teacher that poked his head out.

The plaque on his desk proudly reads Principal Richard Vernon. Even his name throws her off.

"Are you this girl that thought it would be funny to pull the fire alarm?" he says brusquely.

Avalon shakes her head. "No, sir."

"Well, then, you had to have seen the guy who did it."

She pauses. She doesn't want to rat anyone out, not this soon, not at all. She doesn't want to get off on the wrong foot and be known as a snitch, and besides, what if she has a class with the kid that did it? She wouldn't have a good year. "No," she shrugs. "If I saw him, I would tell you. All I can say is I saw brown pants." The boy was wearing gray.

Vernon doesn't seem at all convinced and taps his fingers on his desk, laughing under his breath. "Did this boy have long hair? Was this boy unnecessarily obnoxious and cocky? Because there is no way you couldn't have seen him."

Exactly. "No, sir, I didn't see him. If I didn't see him, how would I have talked to him?"

"Don't give me sass, young lady!" he snaps sharply, pointing an accusing finger at her. "You're new here, aren't you? You don't want to be getting off on the wrong foot."

That's exactly what I'm trying to prevent, she thinks with a microscopic shake of her head. "Exactly, sir. I'm just telling the truth."

"It had to have been John goddamn Bender," he says under his breath, yanking open a drawer and pulling out a white slip. He scribbles her name across the top, reading it off of her pink pass, and from her position, she reads DETENTION proudly printed across the top. Her stomach drops. Already...

"Unless you want to tell me the truth, you have a detention this coming Thursday. If you come clean, it won't count for anything. But if you don't, you have a demerit you didn't earn, Missy," he says, ripping off the top slip and shoving it to her. "Get Sheila to sign that for you."

Avalon locks her jaw, crumpling the paper in her left hand before handing it to the desk receptionist. The woman looks up at her in concern, shaking her head pitifully. "We all know it was that Bender boy, honey. Don't get yourself into this because you don't want to have a bad reputation."

The girl just shrugs. "It won't matter. One detention doesn't matter."

She clucks her tongue, giving the slip back to the girl. "That boy isn't worth all the trouble."

With much less of a struggle than before, Avalon safely located herself to European History, arriving there at a time with a crowd of students big enough for her to slip in unnoticed. She gave her schedule to her teacher, who nodded her through, and luckily, he gave her a seat in the far left corner, right beside a window and a somewhat spastic boy to her right. She wasn't sure if he was naturally that way, or if he just got nervous that a girl was even bothering to speak to him. But he stuttered, rubbed his nose, snorted awkwardly when he laughed, and damn near sneezed on her. He would've, if she hasn't jerked out of the way and let all the mist fall on the worksheet he was helping her with. And then he turned beet red, rubbed his sleeve over his nose for the thousandth time that period, and hid his face while he apologized for his Spring allergies.

Avalon decided that she liked him, and at least she'd be able to talk to him. At least she'd have ONE person she could call an acquaintance.

The bell rings, and she makes her way out, the awkward boy - Brian, his name was - saying something to an equally awkward boy behind her. She looks down at her schedule, her next being woodshop, in room 112. "Hey, do you know where this is?" she says, turning around to face Brian.

He nods. "Oh, oh yeah, that's where I'm headed." She sticks to his side without saying anything, listening to him go off about the Physics club or something like that, nodding when she should and making little noises to let him know that she's actually listening. They make their way slowly down the packed stairs to the first floor, going past two couples joined at the mouth without coming up for air, past a pretty red-headed girl that playfully hits him in the arm when she passes by, and then Brian gets shoved from behind, almost falling down the rest of the stairs before a denim covered arm wraps around his neck to pull him back up.

"Hello, dweebie," a voice Avalon already recognizes said. "Sorry for endangering your life there. I just couldn't help myself."

"It-it's no problem, Bender," Brian says with a slight laugh. She's not sure if he's afraid of if he's happy to see this kid.

Bender peeks around Brian's head, lifting a brow at Avalon. "Who's your lady friend?"

"Um, this is, um, Avalon. She's new."

"We already met," she says quickly, trying to contain her frustration. She got a detention for this kid. Of course, she's going to be pissed.

"Ah. Ah, 220 girl," Bender nods. "How did that whole fire alarm situation go?"

Avalon snorts. "If you really wanna know, I got a detention. Didn't want to rat anyone out."

Brian shrugs. "Well, hey, you really shouldn't, um, worry about what people are gonna, gonna think about you, you know, because getting in trouble is, is just - "

Bender smirks and cuts him off. "Consider it your warm welcoming to Shermer."

The three of them enter a room that, naturally, reeks of wood, and Brian and Bender take their seats. Avalon tries to go quietly to the front, but half the class is just staring at her, and she hands her schedule to the shop teacher, Mr. Dawson. He looks over it and points to a table in the back. "You will be seated next to our... respectable... Mr. Bender."

Avalon's nose twitches and she heads to hear seat. settling down in a chair, the only thing between her and Bender being the currently turned off table saw. And again, he's looking at his reflection, picking his teeth with a little sliver of wood before tossing it to the side and leaning his chair back against the wall.

"Today, we're continuing Unit 3. Most of you should at least be ready to cut out what you need, and I am available for assistance," Mr. Dawson says, pulling out a bucket of goggles. She goes up to the front again, grabbing a pair from the bottom. Beside her, Bender sifts through them until he finds a pair marked with a little star in marker. He fogs them up with his breath and wipes them off with his sleeve, smiling and nodding at the amused Mr. Dawson.

"Give her the basic safety instructions, John," he says. "I'm trusting you can get that done."

"If you gotta help a lady, gotta help a lady."

They go back to their desk and she sits there expectantly, watching him as he switches on the table saw and it whirs to a speed that makes her stomach flip. But Bender doesn't say anything, doesn't do anything to help her, only goes to a little table stacked with fresh, huge sheets of wood.

She makes a face at him. He blinks. "Safety?"

He removes his jacket, draping it over the back of his chair. "I think it's pretty simple. Just don't cut yourself."

By the end of the day, Avalon is exhausted. She's sick of going up and down stairs, she's sick of rude people that bump into her like she's not even there, and she's sick of girls staring at her and whispering rather than coming up to talk to her and ask her where she's from. She wants to get home, but the worst part is - she has to goddamn walk.

Her parents have always been firm believers in walking when you get the chance. "Any walking is exercise," is what her stepdad always reminds her. Even if they live two miles from her school, they're expecting her to walk to and from. And that takes at least an hour with stoplights and school traffic. An hour taken out of her day.

Then again, she has nothing to do.

So when the bell rings she packs up her books, leaving the library where she has her free period. She was able to get her trig homework done, at least, and half of her European capitals and countries done. So much homework on the first day...

She pushes her way out of the side exit of the library, into the flow of jocks coming from the sports area where they had their last period athletics. She tries to weave through them as fast as she can, because she knows at least one of them would be rude enough to grab her butt or something like that, and then they're apart of the giant crowd of kids trying to get out of school.

After ten minutes of pushing and shuffling she's able to get out on the main sidewalk, where other kids, mainly freshmen and sophomores who can't drive, are walking home. She's a junior who CAN drive, but doesn't have a car. She feels like an idiot.

She winds around the football field, turning in the direction of the little neighborhood she lives in. All the other kids walking home have someone to talk to, a friend that's coming with them. Man, I look lonely... she thinks, fiddling with the watch on her wrist.

At the end of the football field, there's a stoplight, and she stands just outside of the huddle of kids waiting for it to turn. Someone stands awfully close to her, and she fidgets when she hears them breathe a little deeper. They're literally pressed up against her side, and she steps a little to the left, only for them to follow. She tucks her hair behind her ear, looking at them from the corner of her eye, and cringes.

"How many times do I have to run into in one day, dude?"

Bender smirks and shrugs. "Just your lucky day."

She sighs and the crosswalk turns. She briefly considers walking faster than him but decides that A) he won't let up and B) she would rather have someone to walk with than nobody at all. "I'm surprised you don't have detention or something," she says with a shake of her head.

"Oh, I do," he replies quickly. "There's just no point in going."

Avalon doesn't question him. He starts to hum a guitar riff, slapping his hand against mailboxes they pass by, eventually breaking into a run and then skidding to a stop to wait for her.

"Why do you cause so much shit?" she asks, staring at the mailboxes that he's knocked so hard that they tilt to the right.

"I do what entertains me."

"And you're entertained by knocking people's mailboxes off their posts and pulling fire alarms for no reason?"

"I am entertained by what entertains me. And if that's what entertains me at the moment then I'm going to do it," he explains flatly, and she can't tell if he's angry or not. She looks at him from the corner of her eye again, his hair hanging over his face as he looks down at his gloves and clenches and unclenches his fists. "You must smoke so much weed," she wonders out loud, and she sees the corners of his lips barely lift up.

"Well, gee, how'd you guess, you genius, you," he says sarcastically, pushing his fingers into his cheeks as he smiles cheesily.

Avalon laughs under her breath. She would've loved a guy like him when she was a freshman, when her entire life pretty much revolved around smoking weed, listening to rock n roll, and she got in trouble more than she should have. That's not to say the first two still aren't apart of her general life; she still lights up and loves Led Zeppelin like no damn other. But she's smarter now.

"You know," he says after a minute, scraping a stick he picked up against the picket fences they pass by, "I have a girlfriend. So if it seems like I'm flirting, I'm not. I swear."

"You wouldn't seem like the type to have a steady girlfriend."

"I don't know if we're steady," he says quickly. "She's just the first one I've had where I haven't had three others at the same time."

"That sounds more likely," she says. There's a tenderness in his voice that she can hear, hidden deep down, but she still hears it loud and clear.

She can see her house, two blocks away. They reach another crosswalk, and he looks to the left, where a field separates the middle class from the lower class houses.

She should've known. A kid like him has to be from a bad neighborhood.

Avalon waits to push the button. He looks like he's debating going home or going somewhere, anywhere that isn't it, but the look quickly fades in his eyes. "I needa get home," he says quietly. "It's a regular palace, trust me."

Avalon manages a smile. "Alright."

He walks backwards slowly, like he's preparing himself to go home, and she realizes he probably has a terrible home life. Abusive parents. Something nobody ever deserves. When he finally turns around, facing the houses on the other side of town, the houses that are all somehow just darker and smaller and shadier, she feels something pull in her gut. She's not sure if it's pity or if she's scared for him. She just doesn't want anybody to get hurt.

"Bye, Bender," she calls after him, just barely loud enough.

He doesn't turn around, but she knows he heard her.


	2. Chapter 2

**WOOOOO an update a week later. I honestly had this done two days after I posted the first chapter, I was just too lazy to do anything about it.**

**But here it is. It gets kinda cheesy at the end, but I dunno, he just seems like the type to get even with somebody even if it means offending them and of course it offended her because CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT THIS TIES IN WITH STUFF YA KNOW. **

**And I want Bender to be crazy about Claire. It's still really undecided if him and my OC are going to get together, I feel like it repels readers either way...**

**Please reviiewwww I didn't get a single one, man, that's all I really want. **

**But thanks for even reading my stuff man.**

**(Same disclaimer, I wish I owned the Breakfast Club but I unfortunately don't)**

* * *

He hasn't been home this early in months. If he's not climbing in through his bedroom window, he's slipping in when he knows nobody is downstairs, when his parents are up in their room screaming about drugs or money or something that the average Shermer family doesn't have to worry about. Right now, he is expecting the very worst, for his mother to scream at him and his father to slap him across the face.

There's a big difference to BEING home and COMING home in his house. If you're already there, you just have to wait for someone to explode. If you come home, you're giving them a complete opening to tear you down. And John doesn't ever want them to have that chance. But it's never in his hands. Unless he just doesn't come home. Part of him is glad to take the beatings, because he'd much rather it be him than his younger sister, Elise. But he'd obviously much rather not have bruised ribs for a month.

He enters his shady little neighborhood, where most of the residents are drug addicts or recovering. A group of older men, two of which he knows have been in jail, are playing poker around a plastic table in a garage with the door wide open. They all look at him when he passes by, nodding at him.

Here, he's considered a good kid. He has good behavior. It's still something he's not used to.

When he comes to his house, he stands hesitantly in the driveway, staring at the grass and roots growing through the cracks in the cement. Was he supposed to fix that? He doesn't want his dad to have an excuse to hurt him...

The front door opens and his mother trudges out, slamming the door behind her. His chest tightens. Fresh out of a fight...

She sits on one of the worn down chairs on the porch, lighting a cigarette hanging from her lip and sighing heavily. She doesn't notice him for a minute, but then her eyes open again, and she closes in on him, taking a long drag, the tip of her cigarette glowing orange. John fidgets, hoping his fear isn't showing on his face. Even if he's been dealing with this his entire life, it doesn't change the fact that it's terrifying.

"The fuck you been, Johnny?" she says as she exhales a cloud of smoke, tapping the exposed ash off. This past week, he hasn't seen much of his parents. Maybe it's because of Claire, because he's trying to forget that his parents are people she will never meet, because if they're out of sight, they're out of mind. Or maybe, probably, it's just nice to have an excuse to be away from them.

"I've been working," he tells her, which isn't entirely a lie. He's been selling pot for his supplier, Lou, and since he likes him, he was allowed to keep a third of what he made. That came out to a nice $200 in his pocket. Enough to keep him going for a week or two, without stealing or without his parents' money.

He's expecting her to snap, or to ask for some of his money, or to tell him to get the fuck out. But instead she leans her head back against the wall behind her, her face angry and tired, and waves him inside. "Avoid your dad."

John nods, feeling himself relax for a moment. Sometimes, very rarely, his mother is so exhausted from fighting with his father that she can't take her rage out on anyone, even him. It's the softest and nicest she could ever be and be knows it.

He closes the door quietly behind him, hoping his dad couldn't hear him and his mother talking through the door. The house is mostly darkened, the only light in the living room - broken window, and the duct tape covering it up can't keep the light out - and the kitchen, with a similar problem. John can hear his dad grumbling around something, slamming drawers in the kitchen.

Quickly, as quietly as he can, he bolts down the hall towards the stairs leading down to the basement. Once he's down, he sighs in relief, shaking his head. He shouldn't have come home. He should've gone out, wandered around town for awhile before finding a pay phone and calling Claire. They could have hung out, something that they can barely do when they're not not hiding from the scrutinizing eyes of both of their friends at school. The best he's done is taken her to a cheap little burger joint. How is he supposed to impress a girl like her...

He sits on his bed, kicking off his boots and throwing them in the corner. He shrugs off his jackets and flannel until he's left in his t-shirt and jeans, and then he lays back on his bed and closes his eyes.

When his eyes open, the room is almost pitch black. John leans up on his elbows, looking around in sleepy concern. He's still too tired to care that he completely wasted his afternoon sleeping. But what would he have done anyway? Smoked a bowl, probably, then gone out to meet with friends to smoke even more. He's honestly surprised neither of his parents came down and woke him up with screaming about he's a lazy little bastard.

He sits up slowly, cracking his neck from side to side and looking at the clock on his table. It's 11:24. Within a few minutes, he's fully awake and wondering where he should be going. Because he's not wasting his night. Some of his friends are older, anyway; he could head down to Maloney's Hole, the bar downtown where Lou and Anal, his other friend, pretty much seem to live year round. He could call Cherry and see what she's up to, if she's not already sleeping in her perfect little canopy bed.

Someone else pops into his head. Quiet little Allison, who he's talked to the least out of the rest of the bunch he met at Saturday School. She barely talks as it is, but even then they don't need to talk much. She might be a kleptomaniac psychopathic liar, but he has a deeper appreciation for her than Sporto or the little dweebie. And God knows she's always awake. He only sees her dozing in chemistry on the days he actually bothers to go.

John pulls on his clothes and hops up on the stool under the basement window, popping it open and hauling himself out. He's perfected the art, and he comes out soundlessly, sitting on the dead grass outside of his house to regain himself before rising to his feet. He digs out his cigarettes, fishes out his lighter, and lights up what he's sure is one of his many cigarettes of the day.

Walking through his neighborhood at night isn't the smartest thing to do. He knows that. Even if he's considered a good kid here, there's a completely new cast of characters at night, guys in their twenties and thirties that are looking for someone like him to shove around. But he's not particularly scared. Maybe he should be, but he just can't bring himself to care.

Instead of walking straight up the street, he turns to walk down the field separating his sad neighborhood from the rest of Shermer. He can easily find Allison's house, light blue with a strange array of bird feeders all around it. The only reason he knows where she lives is because he felt bad the Tuesday after their detention, when she was down and out over Andy on the fast track to ignoring her, and he decided to walk her home. She needed to know SOMEONE would still care after that ordeal, after they opened up to each other. And he needed to know the same thing, too. They couldn't all just be relying on Brian to be the nice guy and resorting to staring at everyone else with angry eyes in the halls, wondering why the fuck they even bothered to care in the first place. Luckily, Andy realized he was being a dumbass and him and Allison have been clinging to each other since. And John won't admit it, but he's more than glad that that happened.

He lights his second cigarette with his first one, his third with the second, and then he comes to a stop behind her house, with its slanted cement back porch and the perpetual flow of birds taking turns at the bird feeder. Sometimes he wonders if Claire would have a problem with this, with him going to see another girl in the middle of the night, even if it IS mostly to share cigarettes and booze and barely talk at all. But it doesn't stop him from climbing up to the little balcony outside of her lit up sliding doors, tapping his knuckles against them.

Allison's shaggy little head peeks out. John grinds out his cigarette on the side of a flower pot and steps inside the door she holds open.

"Hello, Nympho," he says, sitting on the beanbag in the corner of her bedroom. "How are you this fine evening?"

Allison shrugs, returning to her desk. She picks up a pencil and goes back to the drawing she was working on before he showed up, and he debates whether or not he should ask her what it's of. He decides against it; she won't give him a real answer.

"Vodka, Nympho?" he asks after a moment's silence. She yanks open a cabinet and throws him a bottle. That's one thing he can always rely on her for. She has endless bottles of vodka, and if the stash in her room runs out, she takes as many bottles as her parents have and they don't notice a goddamn thing.

John gulps half of it down. Tastes like shit, but he'll do what it takes to get drunk. He comes up for air, wiping a drop off of his face, and caps the bottle, leaning back in the beanbag and looking around her room.

He's guessing at some point, her parents had to have cared. No young girl REALLY goes through all the trouble to perfectly theme her bedroom, complete with butterfly wallpaper, baby pink bedsheets, purple floor rugs and the matching beanbag he's sitting in. He wants to ask, but he knows it would make her upset.

John digs through his pockets, listening for the familiar crinkle of the paper bag containing his joints. He pulls two out, one just in case Allison actually wants to partake in the smoking. He's never been sure why she rarely does it, only that when she does she actually TALKS, and he's just assuming that she doesn't want to say too much. He holds it up, and without looking she nods.

He lights himself up first and then throws the lighter to her, taking a deep, long drag that makes his head spin. He holds it in, his throat burning, and opens his mouth to let it roll out, watching the cloud of smoke dissipate. This is good shit, the best that he can afford in big batches, and Allison will probably choke.

She takes a huge hit, and he watches in quiet amusement as her eyes barely widen and her cheeks get a little redder. She coughs it out, muffling it into her shirt, tears sliding down her cheeks, and then she ducks behind her desk. He hears quiet retching, and he ducks his head and smiles. Too strong for her. Allison pokes her head up, laughing in that quiet way she does. "I threw up."

John finishes his joint before she does, his limbs feeling light and airy, his eyes a little heavier than before. He hasn't gotten this baked in awhile, and he sits back and lets it soak in, his mouth turned up into a permanent little smirk. Allison takes tiny puffs, experimenting with the clouds she blows out, attempting to make little Os and coughing them out aggressively until she gets it right. He laughs at her, and she proudly admires her work, taking bigger hits to make it last longer. He closes his eyes, waiting for her to pipe up. He doesn't want to talk, doesn't need to, but he knows that she will.

"I'm glad we're friends, Bender," she says, smacking her lips together. "I'm glad you're not a shitty person. Or you're not as shitty as I expect you to be."

He nods. He would say something to her, but she already knows his answer. He wouldn't have came here in the first place if he didn't like her.

"I'm glad we met. I'm glad we all met." He hears the familiar sound of her biting at her nails, that disgusting chipping, snapping, cracking that makes his skin crawl. He just can't ever get her to stop it. "I'm glad that you have Claire, and I have Andy, and Brian is such a nice guy. I'm glad that we can do the stuff we do and not care that we do it."

John feels annoyance rise and fall inside of him. He gets that she's glad. He doesn't need to hear it a thousand times. But then he realizes it's nice to have her speaking at all.

"I'm glad Andy didn't leave you," he says.

She's quiet for a long time, but he doesn't regret saying it. He's genuinely happy that that did not happen.

Eventually, she takes a breath. "Yeah. I'm glad for that, too."

* * *

"John." A little kick to his leg. "John." Another, a little harder. "JOHN." His knee actually starts to hurt. "JOHN FUCKING BENDER."

His eyes slowly open. He stares up at the pink ceiling above him, the glow in the dark star stickers stuck up there barely glowing in the dim light. He blinks once, blinks twice, and then he looks up at Allison. She has her headband on, makeup applied the way Claire showed her, in slightly different clothes, all for Andy. He blinks for a third time, and then he slowly remembers that today is a Tuesday, and Tuesday typically means school, and he flips onto his side, grunting as a means to tell Allison to fuck off and he still wants to sleep.

"School means Claire," Allison says as bribery. He opens his eyes and looks at her, because of course, he wants to see Claire, but of course, he's not getting up before 7 in the fucking morning. He hears her sigh, shuffle her feet, and then a reluctant, "I can make you food."

John slowly rises to his feet, following her downstairs without a second thought. He's never been in the downstairs of her house. He's always climbed up to her room and climbed down from it. But downstairs it's just as coordinated, everything all matching Earthy colors, the sofas more meant for decoration than for comfortable sitting.

He sits down at her kitchen table, watching her pull out bacon and eggs from the fridge and start making breakfast. "No Pixie Stick sandwiches?" he taunts her.

"I know how to feed a Neanderthal."

John smiles. "Got me beat, Nympho."

He kicks his feet up on the chair across from him, listening to the bacon sizzle. He looks up at the clock on the wall and reads the time in disgust. "It's 6:45?!" Allison nods. "Why the fuck did you wake me up so early?"

"I want to get to school before 7:30," she explains.

John sighs. This obviously has something to do with Andy, because most days, Allison is as late as him. But she's making him breakfast, so he's not going to complain. Allison piles everything onto a plate, all of it clearly meant for him, because she goes into the pantry to grab a handful of Pixie Stix. John smiles at her as he shovels eggs into his mouth, and she goes about sprinkling her Pixie Stix all over two pieces of toast, eating her disgusting sandwich at the same time he finishes his good. He burps in satisfaction, leaning back in the chair for a moment as he pats his stomach.

He looks up at the clock again: 7:00. They have some time to kill. Driving to school from Allison's house - and he's leaning on the fact they're getting a ride, because her parents are almost always the ones to take her to school - takes 10 minutes tops.

"...where the fuck are your parents?" John says, listening for any telltale thumping from upstairs that would be her parents getting ready for work.

"They left already." He groans. Walking to school.

"I got a car."

"...a car?"

Allison nods. "A car."

"Would you like to show me said vehicle, Reynolds?"

Allison nods again, walking to the garage without waiting for him. He goes after her, and she left the door open, and she's standing in front of a beat up... ambulance... John wishes he could say it was a hippie van with whack paint job, but he recognizes faded red crosses on the side of the van, and his eyes crinkle and he cringes and he realizes that her parents must really not care what she does. If she's wheeling an old ambulance into their garage, they must **REALLY** not notice shit that goes on in this house.

After a moment of reluctance, John opens the passenger side door, and Allison starts the car, leaving her hand on the key. She looks around the car, seemingly proud of her purchase, and he doesn't know what to tell her.

"Does Sporto know about this?" he asks, not bothering to buckle his seatbelt.

"Yes." She pulls slowly out of the garage, pressing the button to close the door too soon so that it scrapes against her bumper.

"And how does he feel about this?"

Allison smirks. "He's not slipping me the hot beef injection in the back, if that's what you're asking."

"He won't be anytime soon, Nympho," he chuckles, peering back. It's gutted out of anything they might have had back there before, so maybe if she gets a good paint job and puts a bed back there things won't be so... morbid. John looks up at the ceiling of the back and makes a face of disgust. "Is that a fucking bloodstain?"

Allison laughs in excitement. "I hope so!"

They pull into the mostly empty school parking lot and he hops out, skipping up onto the sidewalk and up the stairs. He WOULD stick around and say thank you, but he can already tell she's getting pepped up to see Andy, and he doesn't really feel like being there when it's full blown.

Inside, there's three people dotted around the hall, Andy being one of them. John bumps his shoulder against him when he passes by, giving him a nod and a smirk. Him and Sporto don't talk much, just like him and Allison. Maybe that's why he likes them so much.

He runs down the hall, earning glares from the other two people besides Andy, and intentionally skids to a stop outside of the double doors of the library. It makes a screeching noise that echoes, and he smiles in satisfaction. Vernon better have fuckin' heard that, staked out in his office an hour before school starts.

He steps inside of the library. It never seems to be closed, and he fucking hates it. The amount of time he spends in this room is ridiculous. He knows its all up to him, that what he does lands him in there weekly, but there has to be a better place to hold detention...

"Dweebie!" he yells at the sight of Brian. The skinny boy turns around and offers an awkward smile with his braces. John claps him on the shoulder too hard, feeling Brian push back just has hard so he wouldn't go flying into the lap of the girl in front of him.

"Hey, Bender," Brian says, moving to the chair at the next table so he would have a place to sit. John smiles at him as he sits down, then fixes his attention on the girl.

Woodshop girl. Fire alarm girl. "Avalon," he says, although it's just his guess. He can't remember her name.

"...yeah?" John looks between her and Brian, trying to picture the two of them. It would be nice for Brian to have a girl, to finally not be Just Brian. Maybe they could all go on one of those stupid triple dates Claire drools over. But he can't picture the two of them, because Brian is too quiet and shy and John can just tell she's a lot... firmer than him. Besides, the kid looks like he's twelve, and John can admit she's good looking. If he didn't have Claire, he would consider her.

John taps his fingers against the table beside him, smoothing his tongue over his teeth, waiting for either of them to get back into a conversation. But neither of them do; Brian keeps compulsively sneezing and the girl won't stop fiddling with her watch, crossing and uncrossing her legs, staring at him and quickly looking away when he looks at her.

He leans forward, kicking his boot against her shoe. She looks up at him nervously, barely smiling. She's not checking him out or anything like that. She looks like she's pitying him. And he fucking hates being pitied. But he isn't about to snap at a girl, much less a new girl, much less a new girl that may or may not be Brian's future reluctant girlfriend. Or, god forbid, if things don't work out with Claire, she could be an option.

"You're new," John finally says. She nods. "Where are you from?"

"California."

He "ahh"s in understanding, bobbing his head and looking over at Brian. "Did you hear that? She's from California. You wanna know what she accused me of yesterday?"

"Wh-what?" Brian says.

"She told me that I must smoke a large amount of marijuana," John says, feigning a look of hurt. "And although she was right, I don't think she's in any place to be judging me." Avalon makes a face. He offended her. John smiles to himself.

"I wasn't judging you, smartass. I was just stating the obvious. Who here doesn't fuckin' know that? I'm NEW and I can tell."

He holds up his hands, shaking his head. "Hey, don't get riled up. I'm just saying. Smoking weed might as well be a sport in California."

"Are you saying I smoke?"

"I'm saying it's probable."

Avalon leans back in her chair with a huff, crossing her arms over her chest and looking off to another part of the library. "You're... you're not wrong. I'm just not a fucking burnout like you probably are."

"Oh, Jesus, I'm so hurt," John says with a hand pressed to his chest. "You think I don't hear that everyday?" He narrows his eyes at her. "You were judging me. People don't say stuff like that without judging them, GIRLS don't say stuff like that without judging."

"Guys, I, I don't think we should be, like, you know, arguing over this stuff. Cause, like - "

John holds a finger in Brian's face. "Shut up for a second, Johnson."

"Yeah, okay, I can do that."

"We're not arguing, Brian," Avalon says.

"You could've been a goddamn blow queen, for all I know. But, hey, who am I to judge?" he says mockingly, leaning back in his chair.

She looks at John, her eyes heavy, and then shakes her head, picking up her bag. "I don't even care. I'm going to the bathroom."

As soon as she's out of the room, Brian kicks John's foot, getting up from his seat and huffing with his hands on his hips. "You, look, you upset her," he says, pointing at the door. "You made her leave."

The other boy lifts an eyebrow. "I'm sorry, Brian. Are you romantically interested in this female?"

He shifts from one foot to the other. "I think, I don't know. I, I just think she's cute. And she, she talks to me, and people don't, you know, talk to me."

"Well, Brian, I don't think a girl that smokes weed would fly in a wholesome family such as yours." The bell rings and John stands up, clapping his hand against Brian's shoulder again. "Good luck tryna bag that one."

"Hey, if you can get Claire, I could get her!"

John laughs, the sound echoing around the library and earning an angry stare from the librarian. "Two VERY different situations, my friend."

He debates if he should go to class. He has first period Trig, by some kind of miracle that he even passes math with a B every year, and there's nobody he even likes in that class. That's not saying he likes many people at this school, but it's nobody that laughs at his jokes. Maybe he'll just come for second period. He has English with Claire, and he hasn't seen enough of her these last few days... Caught up in prom committee shit.

Nah, he's not going to Trig.

"I can't _believe_ you can walk _right_ by me without noticing," Claire says, elbowing him in the ribs.

John turns around, smiling openly at her, pulling her into his side and kissing her straight on the mouth. As expected, they earn their stares, but both of them are getting used to it. At least, he is.

"Slow morning," he explains. He's trying not to smile too much. He doesn't want to get too crazy over a girl. It's just the fact that he got her, and he knows that he got her, and everyone else knows that he got her that makes him ecstatic. A girl like her does not settle for a boy like him. But she did.

"Are you going to class?" she says with some concern.

He sheepishly shakes his head. "I haven't ditched in awhile," he says to compensate for the fact that he isn't going.

She frowns, glaring at him. The warning bell rings and she looks up the stairs, sighing. "Fine. You better come to English, John Bender."

She kisses him again and he smiles.

"I can guarantee it, Cherry."


End file.
